File:Secret Power.pdf

A detailed account of how the integration of New Zealand into the UKUSA global signals interception system was achieved with neither the knowledge not consent of the country's senior politicians - in particular Prime minister David Lange who wrote the foreword to this book. It also deals with the infamous Rainbow Warrior incident in detail

First published in 1996, it is a real eye-opener on the extent to which elected politicians are, as a matter of carefully nurtured routine deception, kept in total ignorance of the real agenda. Even David Lange, the then Prime Minister of New Zealand thought that the construction of the Waihopai satellite station was to compensate for being forcibly distanced from - in his fond (but false) beliefs - former US intelligence pooling, following NZ's nuclear-free heresy. His own people assured him it was. It wasn't. It was to further integrate NZ into ECHELON and the head of the organisation responsible for running it was a US citizen PAID by the US, whose loyalties were first and foremost to the US - and the Prime Minister simply had no idea. Unbelievable really, but Lange says as much in his foreword.

The book also covers the sinking of the Greepeace ship 'Rainbow Warrior' in Aukland harbour by agents of the French SIS which was closely followed by the parliamentary decision to declare NZ nuclear free. Counter-intuitively, both issues became useful tools in further misleading both NZ politicians and the public about intelligence matters generally. In a nutshell, their beliefs and behaviour was (and remains) analagous to innocent, credulous but trusting children being cynically moulded by deceptive and grossly manipulative parents.

David Lange's Foreword

Once upon a time life was easy for the intelligence community. Michael Joseph Savage made a mark in the sands of history with his ‘where Britain stands we stand’ declaration. It was only right that we saw the world through British eyes and, when Britain retreated, only sensible that we should go all the way with LBJ as an Australian Prime Minister (in whose memory a swimming pool in Melbourne was named) once declared. The Cold War kept us in line and on line.

In the mid-1980s we bucked the system. We may have been ahead of our time on matters nuclear, but we were out of step with what was called the ‘Western Alliance’. It took a break with the United States and Britain to make the people of New Zealand aware that we were part of an international intelligence organisation which had its roots in a different world order and which could command compliance from us while withholding from us the benefits of others’ intelligence.

Life at the time was full of unpleasant surprises. State-sponsored "terrorism" was a crime against humanity as long as it wasn’t being practiced by the allies, when it was studiously ignored. In the national interest it became necessary to say ‘ouch’ and frown and bear certain reprisals of our intelligence partners. We even went the length of building a satellite station at Waihopai. But it was not until I read this book that I had any idea that we had been committed to an international integrated electronic network.

It was with some apprehension that I learned that Nicky Hager was researching the activity of our intelligence community. He has long been a pain in the establishment’s neck. Unfortunately for the establishment, he is engaging, thorough, unthreatening, with a dangerously ingenuous appearance, and an astonishing number of people have told him things that I, as Prime Minister in charge of the intelligence services, was never told.

There are also many things with which I am familiar. I couldn’t tell him which was which. Nor can I tell you. But it is an outrage that I and other ministers were told so little, and this raises the question of to whom those concerned saw themselves ultimately answerable.

It also raises the question as to why we persist with the old order of things. New Zealand doesn’t have much in common with Major’s Britain and probably less with Blair’s Britain. Are we philosophically in tune with Clinton’s USA? Is he?

Does all of that prejudice our new orientation to Asia?

There will be two responses to this book. One will be to take the easy course of dumping on Hager. He is quite small and can easily be dumped on. The other will be to challenge the existing assumptions and to have a rational debate on security and intelligence. I have always enjoyed taking the easier course but we may have been the poorer for it.

A detailed account of how the integration of New Zealand into the UKUSA global signals interception system was achieved with neither the knowledge not consent of the country's senior politicians - in particular Prime minister David Lange who wrote the foreword to this book. It also deals with the infamous Rainbow Warrior incident in detail